{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:15:53Z","timestamp":1760242553573,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,20]],"date-time":"2017-11-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1511136000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"MOE research center for online education foundation","award":["2016ZD302"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2016ZD302"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100012166","name":"National Key Research and Development Program of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2016YFB1000602","2017YFB0701501"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2016YFB1000602","2017YFB0701501"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100012166","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61440057","61272087","61363019","61073008","11690023"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61440057","61272087","61363019","61073008","11690023"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Shenzhen Science and Technology Projects","award":["JCYJ20151117173236192","CXZZ20140902110505864"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCYJ20151117173236192","CXZZ20140902110505864"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Learners participating in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have a wide range of backgrounds and motivations. Many MOOC learners enroll in the courses to take a brief look; only a few go through the entire content, and even fewer are able to eventually obtain a certificate. We discovered this phenomenon after having examined 92 courses on both xuetangX and edX platforms. More specifically, we found that the learning coverage in many courses\u2014one of the metrics used to estimate the learners\u2019 active engagement with the online courses\u2014observes a Zipf distribution. We apply the maximum likelihood estimation method to fit the Zipf\u2019s law and test our hypothesis using a chi-square test. In the xuetangX dataset, the learning coverage in 53 of 76 courses fits Zipf\u2019s law, but in all of 16 courses on the edX platform, the learning coverage rejects the Zipf\u2019s law. The result from our study is expected to bring insight to the unique learning behavior on MOOC.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info8040150","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,20]],"date-time":"2017-11-20T11:35:45Z","timestamp":1511177745000},"page":"150","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Investigating the Statistical Distribution of Learning Coverage in MOOCs"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"8","author":[{"given":"Xiu","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China"}]},{"given":"Chang","family":"Men","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China"}]},{"given":"Zhihui","family":"Du","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8222-4013","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jason","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA"}]},{"given":"Manli","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China"}]},{"given":"Xiaolei","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"202","article-title":"MOOCs: A systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012","volume":"14","author":"Liyanagunawardena","year":"2013","journal-title":"Int. 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